Joseph Vissarionovich, who later adopted the name Stalin which signified ‘man of steel’, wanted to make Russia one of the most powerful nations in the world, just like the United States of America, Great Britain, and France. When their coup d’état occurred in November (October, Old Style) 1917, he played an important role, but one less prominent than that of his chief rival, Leon Trotsky. Author of, Below is the full article. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 1939, Stalin made the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany which divided Eastern Europe between the two powers. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). From, Learn about the Potsdam Conference attended by Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin to decide the future of Germany and Europe after WWII. He began collective farms and women's roles expanded. Stalin modernized the nation The Five Year Plans industrialized the nation and strengthened the nation’s economy and military When Nazi Germany invaded, the Soviets were able to resist and help defeat Hitler in World War II Far from continuing his wartime alliance with the United States and Great Britain, Stalin now regarded these countries—and especially the United States—as the arch-enemies that he needed after Hitler’s death. Physically strong and endowed with prodigious willpower, he early learned to disguise his true feelings and to bide his time; in accordance with the Caucasian blood-feud tradition, he was implacable in plotting long-term revenge against those who offended him. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. In about 1904 Stalin had married a pious Georgian girl, Ekaterina Svanidze. Joseph Stalin learned Russian at the church school in his hometown of Gori, Georgia. In 1941, Hitler broke the agreement and invaded the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). At first over-inclined to intervene with inept telephoned instructions, as Hitler did, the Soviet generalissimo gradually learned to delegate military decisions. Dzhugashvili made slow progress in the party hierarchy. By now he had adopted the name Stalin, deriving from Russian stal (“steel”); he also briefly edited the newly founded Bolshevik newspaper Pravda before undergoing his longest period of exile: in Siberia from July 1913 to March 1917. Khrushchev claimed that Stalin was shocked into temporary inactivity by the onslaught, but, if so, he soon rallied and appointed himself supreme commander in chief. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. He became the dictator of the Soviet Union … Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, in Moscow. In his prime, Stalin was hailed as a universal genius, as a “shining sun,” or “the staff of life,” and also as a “great teacher and friend” (especially of those communities he most savagely persecuted); once he was even publicly invoked as “Our Father” by a metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church. Did Turkey fight on the side of Germany in World War II? Reaching Petrograd from Siberia on March 25 (March 12, Old Style), 1917, Stalin resumed editorship of Pravda. Stalin’s biography was long obscured by a mendacious Soviet-propagated “legend” exaggerating his prowess as a heroic Bolshevik boy-conspirator and faithful follower of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Joseph Stalin was the commander of the Soviet military, first making a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler (1939) and then joining the Allies after Germany invaded Russia in 1941. Joseph Stalin would be described as a brutal and unforgiving leader. As a result, a month later, Hitler invaded Poland and precipitated the Second World War. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1927 until 1953. He oversaw the war machine that helped defeat Nazism and was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. He briefly advocated Bolshevik cooperation with the provisional government of middle-class liberals that had succeeded to uneasy power on the last tsar’s abdication during the February Revolution. At the start of World War II, Stalin formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler and Germany. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he ultimately consolidated power to become the Soviet Union's de facto dictator by the 1930s. A bout of childhood smallpox scarred his face, and his left arm was mangled, most likely in a carriage accident. no. He was short, stocky, black-haired, fierce-eyed, with one arm longer than the other, his swarthy face scarred by smallpox contracted in infancy. Joseph Stalin with Svetlana, his daughter with his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. The Battle of Stalingrad (in the following winter) and the Battle of Kursk (in the summer of 1943) were also won by the Soviet Army under Stalin’s supreme direction, turning the tide of invasion against the retreating Germans, who capitulated in May 1945. Between April 1902 and March 1913, Dzhugashvili was seven times arrested for revolutionary activity, undergoing repeated imprisonment and exile. Study how Stalin's Soviet Union employed scorched-earth tactics against German troops on the Eastern Front, In June 1941, German armoured divisions roll deep into the Soviet Union, but by winter they find their supply lines stretched thin and the Soviets determined to fight. Joseph Stalin, Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, (born December 18 [December 6, Old Style], 1878, Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire [ see Researcher’s Note] —died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power. In 1900 he joined the political underground, fomenting labour demonstrations and strikes in the main industrial centres of the Caucasus, but his excessive zeal in pushing duped workers into bloody clashes with the police antagonized his fellow conspirators. His father was a priest and young Joseph spent five years in a Greek Orthodox seminary. Stalin was of Georgian—not Russian—origin, and persistent rumours claim that he was Ossetian on the paternal side. Summer of 1942 marked the low-point for the beleaguered Soviets and their new allies, the British and the Americans, who had been brought into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Anxious to strengthen his western frontiers while his new but palpably treacherous German ally was still engaged in the West, Stalin annexed eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania; he also attacked Finland and extorted territorial concessions. Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. In order to fight off the Germans, Stalin joined the Allies of Britain and the United States. Does the term "D-Day" refer to the invasion of Japan? The mildness of the sentences and the ease with which the young conspirator effected his frequent escapes lend colour to the unproved speculation that Dzhugashvili was for a time an agent provocateur in the pay of the imperial political police. His death triggered a leadership scramble within the Soviet Communist Party, and Nikita Khrushchev ultimately emerged as Stalin’s successor. Joseph Stalin was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 to 1953. He helped to negotiate the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942 , a Lend-Lease treaty with the United States the same year, and accompanied Stalin to the 1943 Tehran Conference , the 1945 Yalta Conference and the Potsdam Conference that year after the German defeat. But under Lenin’s influence, Stalin soon switched to the more-militant policy of armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. A formidable negotiator, he outwitted these foreign statesmen; his superior skill has been acclaimed by Anthony Eden, then British foreign secretary. Stalin’s chief ideological hatchet man, Andrey Zhdanov, a secretary of the Central Committee, began a reign of terror in the Soviet artistic and intellectual world; foreign achievements were derided, and the primacy of Russians as inventors and pioneers in practically every field was asserted. Did you know these facts about Joseph Stalin? Leon Trotsky accused Joseph Stalin of being dictatorial and called for the introduction of more democracy into the party. Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The dictator was evidently preparing to make this “Doctors’ Plot” the pretext for yet another great terror menacing all his senior associates, but he died suddenly on March 5, according to the official report; so convenient was this death to his entourage that suspicions of foul play were voiced. Hopes for domestic relaxation, widely aroused in the Soviet Union during the war, were thus sadly disappointed. He entered Tiflis Theological Seminary to train as a priest, but he left school in 1899. But it was his position as secretary general of the party’s Central Committee, from 1922 until his death, that provided the power base for his dictatorship. In the following year, Dzhugashvili published, at Lenin’s behest, an important article on Marxism and the national question. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Joseph Stalin - Joseph Stalin - Lenin’s successor: After Lenin’s death, in January 1924, Stalin promoted an extravagant, quasi-Byzantine cult of the deceased leader. He was named after Saint Joseph and was raised to be a priest. Born on December 18, 1879, in Gori, Georgia, Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party, becoming a Soviet dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. A communist Joseph Stalin Biography Wiki, Biography, Age, Career, Contact & Informations Biography Who Was Joseph Stalin? Joseph Stalin (December 18, 1878–March 5, 1953) was an important leader in the Russian Revolution who became the head of the Communist Party and dictator of the Soviet state known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This encouraged Germany to attack Poland, thus starting the war. Because the pockmarked Georgian was so obviously unintellectual, they thought him unintelligent—a gross error, and one literally fatal in their case. In May 1941 Stalin recognized the growing danger of German attack on the Soviet Union by appointing himself chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (head of the government); it was his first governmental office since 1923. After the war, Stalin imposed on eastern Europe a new kind of colonial control based on native Communist regimes nominally independent but in fact subservient to himself. 23 November 1901] – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union.However, at the insistence of the rest of the Presidium, he relinquished control over the party apparatus in exchange for remaining Premier and first among equals within the Soviet collective leadership. Stalin attended the postwar conferences at Yalta, Teheran and … Load Previous Page Role in World War II During World War II Stalin emerged, after an unpromising start, as the most successful of the supreme leaders thrown up by the belligerent nations. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The cost was tremendous, however: Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. Former Lecturer in Russian, University of Oxford. Stalin was raised very religious in the Greek Orthodox Church. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1953. Achieving wide visual promotion through busts, statues, and icons of himself, the dictator became the object of a fanatical cult that, in private, he probably regarded with cynicism. He was responsible for the successful defense of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Leningrad against German forces and eventually pushed them back to Germany. From 1921 onward Stalin flouted the ailing Lenin’s wishes, until, a year before his death, Lenin wrote a political “testament,” since widely publicized, calling for Stalin’s removal from the secretary generalship; coming from Lenin, this document was potentially ruinous to Stalin’s career, but his usual luck and skill enabled him to have it discounted during his lifetime. The mother, a devout washerwoman, had dreamed of her son becoming a priest, but Joseph Dzhugashvili was more ruffianly than clerical in appearance and outlook. he declared men and women equal. Corrections? She died some three years later and left a son, Jacob, whom his father treated with contempt, calling him a weakling after an unsuccessful suicide attempt in the late 1920s; when Jacob was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II, Stalin refused a German offer to exchange his son. [By many accounts, Stalin,] more than any other individual, molded the features that characterized the Soviet regime and shaped the direction of Europe after World War II ended in 1945. From 1928 until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union as a dictator, transforming the country from an agrarian peasant society into a global superpower. During World War II Stalin emerged, after an unpromising start, as the most successful of the supreme leaders thrown up by the belligerent nations. His birth date was traditionally believed to be December 21, 1879, but the 1878 date was confirmed by records in the Communist Party central archives. He led the final attack on Berlin, and he was so popular after the war that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, … Joseph Stalin was raised in poverty in provincial Georgia. In December 1899, Dzhugashvili became, briefly, a clerk in the Tiflis Observatory, the only paid employment that he is recorded as having taken outside politics; there is no record of his ever having done manual labour. Speaking only Georgian at home, Joseph learned Russian—which he always spoke with a guttural Georgian accent—while attending the church school at Gori (1888–94). Sort fact from fiction in this World War II quiz. To prevent other client states from following Tito’s example, Stalin instigated local show trials, manipulated like those of the Great Purge of the 1930s in Russia, in which satellite Communist leaders confessed to Titoism, many being executed. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. Monument of Joseph Stalin in front of the town hall in Gori, Georgia. Stalin was a ruthless dictator who stopped at nothing to guarantee that he remained in power. The purpose of this paper is to explain the strengths and weaknesses of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler with regards to their respective leadership styles and their interaction with their subordinates. https://www.biographyonline.net/military/people-world-war-two.html During the quarter of a century preceding his death, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. At home, the primacy of Marxist ideology was harshly reasserted. Increasingly suspicious and paranoid in his later years, Stalin ordered the arrest, announced in January 1953, of certain—mostly Jewish—Kremlin doctors on charges of medically murdering various Soviet leaders, including Zhdanov. His first big political promotion came in February (January, Old Style) 1912, when Lenin—now in emigration—co-opted him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, which had finally broken with the other Social Democrats. Joseph Stalin was one of the most horrifying leaders in the history of the world. In 1939, before the start of the Second World War, Joseph Stalin attempted to form an alliance with France and England against Germany, but when that failed, he signed a no-aggression pact with Hitler. Joseph Stalin, Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, (born December 18 [December 6, Old Style], 1878, Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire [see Researcher’s Note] —died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power. From, Examine how Stalin's Red Army defeated Hitler's Fourth and Sixth armies in the Battle of Stalingrad, In the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–43), the advancing Germans were finally stopped by the Red Army in desperate house-to-house fighting. Tweet; In August 1939, Josef Stalin freed Hitler from his fear of the possibility of a war on two fronts by signing a pact of non-aggression with Germany. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Joseph Stalin, History Learning Site - Biography of Joseph Stalin, RT Russiapedia - Biography of Joseph Stalin, Joseph Stalin - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Joseph Stalin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). Zinoviev and Kamenev united behind Stalin and accused Trotsky of creating divisions in the party. I will analyze each leader’s qualities and then compare them to one another as I close out this document. For the article summary, see. … Active as a politico-military leader on various fronts during the Civil War of 1918–20, Stalin also held two ministerial posts in the new Bolshevik government, being commissar for nationalities (1917–23) and for state control (or workers’ and peasants’ inspection; 1919–23). Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December [O.S. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Dzhugashvili) ... World War II. Joseph Stalin. He never earned a degree. Churchill was voted the greatest Briton in history. He was also responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians through purges and decisions that led to mass starvation. Archpriest of Leninism, Stalin also promoted his own cult in the following year by having the city of Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd). Stalin called for a command economy and outlined the first of several five-year plans. In order to fight off the Germans, Stalin joined the Allies of Britain and the United States. After the Social Democrats (Marxist revolutionaries) of the Russian Empire had split into their two competing wings—Menshevik and Bolshevik—in 1903, Dzhugashvili joined the second, more militant, of these factions and became a disciple of its leader, Lenin. Besides heading the secretariat, he was also member of the powerful Politburo and of many other interlocking and overlapping committees—an arch-bureaucrat engaged in quietly outmaneuvering brilliant rivals, including Trotsky and Grigory Zinovyev, who despised such mundane organizational work. In 1941, Winston Churchill was elected a Fellow of … He then moved to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where he secretly read Karl Marx, the chief theoretician of international Communism, and other forbidden texts, being expelled in 1899 for revolutionary activity, according to the “legend”—or leaving because of ill health, according to his doting mother. Although his mother doted on him, Stalin’s father was a drunk who routinely beat him. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the maximum leader of the Soviet Union from the death of Lenin, in 1924, until his own, in 1953. But he was active behind the scenes, helping to plot a spectacular holdup in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) on June 25 (June 12, Old Style), 1907, in order to “expropriate” funds for the party. He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Stalin’s name meant "man of steel" and he lived up to it. World War II. He attended three policy-making conclaves of the Russian Social Democrats—in Tammerfors (now Tampere, Finland; 1905), Stockholm (1906), and London (1907)—without making much impression. When the Germans menaced Moscow in the winter of 1941, he remained in the threatened capital, helping to organize a great counter-offensive. Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, he destroyed the remnants of individual freedom and failed to promote individual prosperity, yet he created a mighty military-industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age. Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (6 December 1901 [O.S. We investigate the profound effect USSR dictator Josef Stalin had on the diplomatic and military aspects of World War II. He was responsible for leading the Soviet Union through World War II and into the Cold War with the United States. The drunken father savagely beat his son. Joseph Stalin would be known as one of the most ruthless and most evil men in the course of world history, but would help Russia and the Soviet Union’s economies. Stalin’s prewar defensive measures were exposed as incompetent by the German blitzkrieg that surged deep into Soviet territory after Hitler’s unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union of June 22, 1941. He thus increased the number of his subjects by about a hundred million. At the start of World War II, Stalin formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler and Germany. Marshal Georgy Zhukov (December 1, 1896–June 18, 1974) was the most important and most successful Russian general in World War II. Stalin industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivized its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, helped to defeat Germany in 1941–45, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Joseph Stalin, whose real name was Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, was born and raised in Gori in what is now the nation of Georgia. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party in Russia, becoming a Soviet dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. (From left) Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, 1945. December 21, 1879 Updates? During World War II (called the Great Patriotic War), Molotov was the deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee. In August 1939, after first attempting to form an anti-Hitler alliance with the Western powers, he concluded a pact with Hitler, which encouraged the German dictator to attack Poland and begin World War II. His real name was Iósif Vissariónovich Dzhugashvili, although he has gone down in history under his pseudonym, Stalin, which means "made of steel". However, Hitler hated Stalin and the Germans made a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Joseph Stalin was a Russian dictator in the 20th century. As war leader, Stalin maintained close personal control over the Soviet battlefronts, military reserves, and war economy. But he lost out to Joseph Stalin in the power struggle that followed Lenin's death, and was assassinated while in exile. Stalin contemplated fleeing Moscow. Stalin participated in high-level Allied meetings, including those of the “Big Three” with Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehrān (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945). LC-USW33- 019081-C) Foremost among Stalin’s accomplishments was the industrialization of a country which, when he assumed complete control in 1928, was still notably backward by comparison with the leading industrial nations of the world. However, Hitler hated Stalin and the Germans made a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Joseph Stalin was born on December 18, 1878. (Left to right) Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Tehrān Conference, December 1943. He was the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial Georgian town of Gori in the Caucasus, then an imperial Russian colony. 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